Coping
by DancingPetal
Summary: ShikaSaku. SPOILERS 439 onwards. On how to cope. The attack on Konoha is over, the village in ruins. In order to cope with death and loneliness, Sakura seeks out Shikamaru for comfort and company - which leads to something neither of them expected.


Disclaimer: _Naruto_ belongs to Kishimoto Masashi.

A/N: Finally. I've wanted to finish this for ages but never found the time and/or inspiration to do so. That I ever came to a proper end is all thanks to Trovia who is the person I always go crying to if something about style and technique comes up. I would be helpless without her, seriously.

Apart from that: The 21st century eventually caught up with me. I took my old LJ and started to use it as a **writing journal**. So if you want to know what happens with my writing when I don't load up something new for ages, click the "homepage" link on my profile, it leads straight to the LJ.

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**Coping**

He stood leaning against a fragment of a wall that had once belonged to the barbecue restaurant Team 10 had frequented. His frame was lightly illuminated by the beams of the moon but what truly gave him away was the glow at the tip of his cigarette every now and then when he took a drag. He didn't even look at Sakura when she approached silently and leaned next to him, their shoulders so near that she could feel his body heat.

She kept her gaze fixed on the sky because she did not want to look at the wasteland of rubble and debris that had been Konoha before everything went downhill so fast her mind was still struggling to cope with it. It was easier to not look and pretend that in a twisted, surreal way it wasn't so bad. But even the sky was different now – the stars shone brighter because there were no lights from the city to dim their sparkle. The city was gone.

In the distance, she could hear the orders and shouts of the survivors who were trying to rebuild whatever they could and she knew that she should be there, helping to heft the larger pieces of debris with her strength or heal the injuries that were bound to happen. But at the moment, she just couldn't and someone over there seemed to know, keeping the others from going after her, probably Ino.

For once, she didn't care about the smell of Shikamaru's cigarette when a small cloud of the smoke drifted towards her. It was comforting, somehow, because it was something she had come to associate with him. She slumped further against the wall and closed her eyes for a short moment until he shifted next to her.

"Here."

He was holding his cigarette out to her and when she looked at him, she could see the wry curl of his lips. "You look like you need it."

She stared at him for a second, then took the cigarette from him. Her first drag made her cough violently, the second one wasn't much better. But then it got easier, somehow, and she could taste the smoke on her tongue. "What do I look like?" she asked quietly because she needed to talk to someone just to know that she wasn't alone.

Shikamara was still looking at her and the humorless grin on his face deepened a fraction. "Fucked up," he replied.

She answered with a snort, watching the thin pillar of smoke from the tip of her cigarette rise toward the sky. She knew why she had come to him. It wasn't only because she didn't want to feel lonely, but because he understood, he knew what it was like to lose a sensei. He knew how hard it was cope and he had learned how to cope.

And he knew her. They had become friends after Naruto had left for training almost three years ago, when Ino had dragged her to their team meetings instead of letting her mope around the house in depression. She had learned to appreciate his logical, analysing side and his calmness and he had learned to value her intelligence and empathy. Somehow, he had become someone she could go to when she needed help, someone she could talk to. Someone who simply let her be near when she only needed the presence of a human being to chase away the loneliness.

And right now, with Naruto unconscious and Hinata sleeping next to his makeshift stretcher and all the commotion of reconstruction going on she felt more alone than ever. Her shishou had only barely made it, she still didn't know how many of her friends and colleagues had survived and her sensei was dead. She had never felt more lost and alone in her life.

"I knew you would come eventually," Shikamaru said lazily next to her.

She smiled – her mind marvelling detachedly that he could make her do that so easily even now. But then, he had figured her out quite fast once she had let him in on her thoughts. He was someone who saw the details even though most people didn't expect it. "I guess I'm predictable like that."

"Not really. I'm just smart like that."

She snorted again, thankful that he didn't treat her any different from other times, that he didn't treat her like she could be breaking any second – which was exactly how she felt. Her hands trembled when she lifted the cigarette to her lips once again.

"Naruto woken up yet?"

Sakura mutely shook her head and a strand of her hair stuck to her cheek in the process. She brushed it away and absently thought that she should probably go to the river that flowed through the village to wash up but couldn't really bring herself to care at the moment. She noticed Shikamaru looking at her from the corner of his eyes, but when she moved her head to catch his gaze, he lowered his eyes to watch the flame of the lighter that was lighting a new smoke.

"You're not by his side?" he asked with a slight mumble that caused the tip of his cigarette to tremble.

Slinging her arms around herself and directing her eyes to where the makeshift medical area had been erected, she shook her head again. "No. Hinata's with him."

He was silent, and she was grateful for that because she didn't like to analyse how Hinata being with Naruto was a reason for her not to be by her best friend's side. A part of her clenched guiltily but she ignored it. She had become very good with ignoring emotions without actively suppressing them, allowing her inner self to bring them up later when she could deal with them.

She took a drag on her cigarette. "They brought in Shizune's body."

"Sakura," he said rather sharply, as a warning not to panic, to keep her cool. Bending to the emotional pressure was the last thing they could be allowed right now.

She started, then said, "I'm sorry." The tremble of her hands was almost imperceptible now. "How's your leg?"

He glanced at her. "Fine. Get a stab every now and then, but it's bearable."

"You want me to take a look?" she asked, staring at the sky instead of looking at him.

Shikamaru sighed. "No. You better preserve your chakra for when you get back to the medical camp."

She shrugged, but didn't say anything.

Slowly inhaling from his cigarette, he wondered how he could bring her to let go of everything that weighed her down for a moment. She had adopted the policy of never showing weakness over the years, but he could clearly see the hunched outline of her delicate shoulder blades under her dirty red top.

"Where's Shiho?" she asked quietly, before he got a chance to properly develop a strategy.

It was his turn to shrug. "Over there, somewhere, I guess. I'm glad I got rid of her for a while. She started to get on my nerves a bit in the end."

Glancing at her profile, he could see the corner of her mouth quirking up humorlessly. "Poor woman."

"I tried not to encourage her," he replied but it sounded quite harsh to his own ears.

Sakura, though, didn't seem to think so. She snorted. "No one would know when you tried to not be encouraging, Shikamaru. You're only acting like you do all the time, lazy and uncaring."

If it wasn't for the fact that her normally steady hands were still shaking, he would have thought she was perfectly fine. "I thought I was being rather obvious."

"Idiot," she muttered so lowly that he was sure he wasn't meant to react to it. "She may work in the decoding unit but she's clueless otherwise."

"I know." He blew out a cloud of smoke that curled sluggishly in the air. "Maybe I should tell her directly next time."

"Maybe," she agreed.

He had hoped the conversation would succeed in taking her mind off the last days, but her eyes still looked haunted. Silence lapsed between them once again and he was beginning to think that maybe, he should simply let her be, let her sort everything out for herself and wait until she had coped with all the things that weighed her down. Then again, he had an inkling that choosing the most comfortable way for himself would make a guilty conscience nag at him for weeks.

"You should get some rest before you go back to the medical base."

She shook her head. "They need me there."

"Don't think so," he replied lazily. He noticed her unwillingness to accept his statement even though she was silent. "By now all the complicated treatments are done. Whatever there is now can be done by any avarage medic. You would be an addition, but they don't need you that badly, especially not the way you are right now."

"The way I am right now?" she muttered, jerkily flicking away some of the ash clinging to the tip of her cigarette. "Fuck you."

He thought it wiser not to say anything and instead took a drag.

His refusal to answer seemed to rile her up even more. She pushed off the wall and turned to face him, glaring at him heatedly. "Why do you even care? Don't you have any problems of your own?"

Shikamaru stared at her, taken aback and quite uncomfortable. The obvious answer would be that he cared because he was her friend. But that didn't encompass all there was to it. He had focused on her because it was easier to help her face her problems that to face his own. The fact that the barbeque restaurant was only a pile of debris. The way Chouji only scraped by a trauma because his father barely made it. The fact that his home village didn't exist anymore. The fact that Kurenai had almost lost her child. The fact that his mother was still missing.

Sakura seemed to see something of all the jumbled thoughts reflected on his face because she abruptly turned, slung her arms around herself and lifted the cigarette to her mouth. There was a tension between them that was wholly unusual but for once in his life, he couldn't figure out what to do. For once in his life, his mind was struggling.

She flicked away the cigarette butt and for a moment simply stood there, hunched in on herself and looking broken. Then she spoke even though she didn't turn around. "For a while I thought I was in love with Naruto."

Not knowing what to say, he waited.

"We had this bond when he came back. He was glorious and an idiot and he made laugh and mad at the same time. He brought out the best and the worst in me. I nearly lost my mind when I first saw him with four tails because I couldn't bear his hurt. My heart broke for him when everything crumbled around him. I screamed for him when Pein had reduced Konoha to ruins. And then there was Hinata."

He felt out of depth and shifted against the wall, uncomfortably taking a drag on his cigarette.

"Naruto carried her to the next medic he could find after Pein was dead," she continued, sounding strangely wistful. "He was staggering all over the place, but the only thing he told the medic before he passed out was to save Hinata and that she loved him." A choked laugh escpaped her. "Always playing hero, that idiot."

His mind was dissecting the information while he eyed her, fitting all the pieces together. "So that's why you're here."

She shook her head. "No, I only thought I was in love with him. But it's more of a family love. I'm here because everything's… too much right now. I needed a moment to breathe, but didn't want to be alone." She sighed. "I'm sorry I'm taking advantage of you, Shikamaru."

This time it was him who snorted quietly. "You can't take advantage of someone who is a voluntary participant."

Inclining her head in his direction, she apparently smiled – he could see her cheek lifting. "Didn't you want to be alone? Enjoy a few hours without Shiho?"

He quizzically lifted an eyebrow. "Just because I don't want a smitten woman around me all day long you assume I don't want any company at all?"

"Then why are you out here?" she asked, turning back to him.

Rolling his eyes, he sighed. "Troublesome woman. This is the place with the highest chance of avoiding Shiho. And I knew you'd eventually come out here looking for me."

Sakura frowned as she eyed him. "Why?"

"Why what?" he replied irritably.

"Why were you waiting for me?"

Clenching the hand that was in his pocket, he lifted his gaze to the sky. His answer was taking a second too long, but he was fighting down the urge to take a drag on his cigarette. "Because I know how you feel because of Kakashi."

There was a tensed moment where neither of them moved, then her clothing rustled and he glanced at her to see that she was pressing a hand to her lips. She took a deep breath before asking in a surprisingly steady voice, "How do you cope with the pain?"

Smiling wryly, he looked down at the stick beween his fingers, then back up at her. "I smoke."

She nodded wordlessly and he saw her throat move as she swallowed.

Taking in her gaunt form, the circles under her eyes, he wondered at how careless she was being with herself even though she was a medic. Her hair was dull, her skin pale, her clothes ripped and dirty and you could only barely see that she was pretty. Shikamaru lifted his eyes back up to her face and said slowly, "But I don't think smoking is the way for you."

Her own eyes were hard with pain. "Then tell me what else to do."

"I can't, Sakura," he said, regretting it all the same. "Everyone has their own way."

She moved, then, and grabbed his wrist as she stepped in front of him. He could only watch as she lifted the hand holding his cigarette to her face and took a drag, even though her soft features looked harsh in reflection of her inner turmoil, as if she was waiting for a relief that never came.

He tried to pull his wrist away, but she wouldn't let him, holding his hand in place. Dropping the cigarette could burn her. As she took her second drag, he pulled his other hand out of his pocket and took her own wrist. "Sakura, stop it."

She opened her eyes, staring right back at him as she inhaled again and there again was no feeling of relief for her. "Stop it, Sakura," he muttered.

As if his words had triggered something within her, she suddenly let go of his wrist and he immediately threw away the still glowing butt. But then she had grabbed the collar of his vest and pulled herself up for a desparate kiss.

He didn't know what to do. His mind was racing, analysing the information sent by his nerves and trying to come up with a reaction. Then he realized that this was a perfect way to take both of their minds off their situation for a while and shut his brain down, slinging his arms around her and kissing back.

It wasn't a particularly friendly kiss. It was violent, and slobby, and painful, and intense. But it was what both of them needed at that moment because it made them feel less helpless and alone and it pushed the pain to the back of their minds if only for a few stolen minutes.

Before his clouded mind could register what he was doing, he had pulled open the zipper of her shirt as far as it would go, his hands groping at warm skin marred by smaller and larger scars, blindly fumbling for the strip of tucked-in cloth that secured her chest bindings. Hazily, he noticed that her hands had slipped under his shirt and mesh top, her blunt nails scraping urgently at his back, then making the muscles in his abdomen ripple as they pressed to his front.

One of them moaned, muffled by the kiss, and it sounded needy and half-choked. He impatiently ripped at her bindings and she bit his lip, tangling her hands in his hair so that it came loose. When he roughly yanked her closer, she slung a leg around his waist and jerked at the collar of his vest to scrape her teeth over his neck. He felt his body tremble as he pressed her head closer and closed his mouth over the shell of her ear.

Her breath hitched, her hips bucked up against his groin and then she suddenly wrenched away and stumbled a few steps backward, flushed and with her chest heaving. "I'm sorry."

Shikamaru pushed an annyoing strand of hair out of his face. "I didn't exactly mind it, Sakura."

It seemed as if she didn't know what to say, but judging by her expression she was torn between wanting to run as fast and far as she could and trying to patch up the situation.

Eyeing her, he sighed at the fact that his mind still wasn't working properly. He should probably make her understand that she had nothing to feel sorry about. "Look," he said, "you don't need to feel guilty about this. It's normal that you don't want to be alone and it's normal that you want to forget about everything for a bit."

She didn't look too convinced, rather upset. "It's not like I can help feeling guilty, Shikamaru. My sensei just died and her I am making out with someone as if it doesn't faze me!"

He suppressed another sigh and pushed his hands into his pockets. "Kakashi would be the first to understand."

"What do you know?" she snapped.

Slowly, he was starting to get impatient with her. "I told you, Sakura. Everyone has their own way to cope with things. If you need this to remind yourself that you're not alone and that you're still alive to be able to go on, then that's okay. It's your way."

She stared at him silently for a moment, then she turned away and slammed her fist into a fragment of a wall beside her. "Fuck this!"

Shikamaru kept quiet, watching her crumble like the stone she had just punched. As she finally began to cry, he lit another cigarette and leaned back against the wall to watch the sky.

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A/N: If you reached this point and missed the fact that I now have a **writing journal**, then you should have read my pointless rambling at the beginning of this…

The lemon that should've/might've been in here got cut out for the sake of atmosphere. I think it was a good decision. Different opinions?


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